Abstract

Objective: The actual work intends to establish a correlation between quantitative counts for Streptococcus mutans and Candida albicans in the saliva of patients with Down syndrome (DS), and in mentally deficient (MD) patients, with respect to a normal group (C). Design of the study: This study was performed in 166 children (49 DS, 60MD and 57C), whose saliva samples were grown on TYCSB agar and Sabouraud agar. Subsequently, microbiological analysis, scanning electron microscopy and aggregation assays were made. The results were statistically evaluated using the variance analysis (ANOVA) and the Student "t" test for unpaired data. Results: A correlation of 0.45 was found for group C, 0.55 in DS patients and 0.37 in MD patients, when comparing counts of S. mutans and C. albicans in saliva. Scanning electron microscopy analysis showed coaggregation between S. mutans and C. albicans and this was confirmed by in vitro experiments of S. mutans and C. albicans made on nitrocellulose filters. Conclusions: This kind of association between bacteria and fungi contributes to justify a pathogenic synergy among several microorganisms, as well as some infectious local or systemic manifestations, depending on the immunity status of the patient.